by Skye Warren
“I’m not royalty,” I say, horrified by her logic. “And no one’s going to die for me.”
She looks almost pitying, that she’s having to explain the facts of life. “Maybe not royalty in the official sense. But in every way that counts. Girls like me, no one saves us in time.”
“Damon did,” I insist, wishing I could explain how broken he looked, carrying her body.
“He kept me from dying, but that’s not what I needed saving from. What Jonathan did to me…”
He attacked her. Physically. Sexually. My stomach turns over. “God, Penny.”
“So you see what I’m saying. I’m already damaged.”
I shake my head, thinking about that castle again. About how you have to break it apart just to see inside. About the fact that we’re all castles—hard, packed pieces of stone. Perfectly composed by eons of earth shifting and forming, carved into our individual builds.
And when we shatter, there’s no going back to what we were before.
“Sometimes it’s harder to survive,” I murmur.
Her blue gaze sharpens. “Yes.”
“I won’t let you martyr yourself for me. We go together, okay?”
After a long pause she takes my hand again. Whatever we find, we’ll be side by side. I’m imagining something wild like a netted trap hiding beneath a pile of leaves, yanking us into the air as soon as we step onto it.
More likely we’ll find Gabriel already hanging from the tree.
I figured out long ago that Gabriel Miller always gets what he wants. He’ll find a way, even if it breaks him. Even if it kills him. And I’m afraid that with this, it might be worst of all. Because Gabriel is made of stone—he’ll survive anything Jonathan Scott does to him.
The hardest part isn’t dying; it’s surviving.
The way that Penny did. The way that Gabriel did.
And even the way I did, after my mother died, after my father betrayed me.
A scream rents through the street, echoing off the brick walls. The hair on the back of my neck rises. It’s an animal sound, made without conscious thought. Made from pain.
The sidewalks are completely empty. No one in the darkened windows of the tenements even comes to look out. They know something horrible if happening. Something evil.
The scream comes again, and I run toward the sound.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I expect to find a man being pushed to the edge of his limits. And I do find that.
But not the way I thought.
There’s a row of abandoned houses, each one stately and tall, each one crumbling beneath nature and neglect. Some of them have signs in the front, converted into businesses at one time. A lawyer’s office. A boutique. The sign at this house is too faded to read as I streak past it. The door hangs open, not locked. No one’s worried about intruders. No one enters a place with this level of danger, of dread voluntarily.
Instead of Jonathan Scott, looking sinister in a neat tuxedo, wielding some kind of instrument of torture, I find Gabriel Miller with his shirtsleeves rolled up, the white linen fabric stained dark with sweat and soot and blood, holding an iron poker, the end red from heat.
A pile of coals sits in the center of a large fireplace, the kind once used to heat large homes. Half of a desk stands sideways in the corner, signaling some kind of office setting. It’s a modern archaeological dig, layer upon layer of history, the remnants of life lived and lost. I don’t have time to document every artifact, to study every reference, but I can sense the despair in the musty darkness.
And instead of the man I love at the mercy of a killer, hurting, suffering, I see Jonathan Scott tied to the ceiling, his mouth dripping with blood and saliva, his naked torso a maze of scars and open wounds.
Gabriel’s eyes meet mine, and for one horrifying moment I can see everything he’s seeing. I can feel everything he’s feeling—the anger and the pain, the determination and sinking mercy. He’s a man who’s done violence before, one who will do it again.
And I’m the only person who can reach him.
“What are you doing here?” he says, and even his voice sounds different. Cracked.
“Looking for you,” I whisper. “How long have you been here?”
“You shouldn’t be here.”
The sound coursing through the night air had narrowed my vision. I didn’t know what kind of building we’d come to, but now that I look around, I see the remnants of some kind of clinic—that old rubbery floor strewn with dust, missing ceiling tiles, the smell of mildew sharp in the air. A home, an office.
“Is this…a hospital?”
Jonathan Scott begins to laugh, a horrifying sound. Blood-tinged spittle flies onto the floor. “Does someone look sick to you, little girl?”
A sudden chill overtakes me. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard him speak before now. A sense of dreamlike familiarity washes over me, moving my lips. It’s someone else who answers him, her voice tight. “You’re not looking very well at the moment.”
Dark eyes meet mine, the same ones I saw across the ballroom in my mother’s house. That’s the only time I’ve ever seen this man, but I recognize the venom in his eyes. The soulless intent. “I’ve never been well, not really. Neither have you.”
Gabriel takes a step between us. “Don’t speak to her. You don’t fucking speak to her.”
The poker still burns faintly pink. That’s how hot it is. I can see the marks on Jonathan Scott’s body, the places where Gabriel has already applied the heat. Burns that will never really heal on skin that was never truly fine. “Gabriel,” I whisper. “What happened to him? Look at all the open wounds, the burns, the blood. Did you do all of this?”
Though his face looks completely normal, his body is covered in old wounds. Ropes of scars on top of scars. I’m not sure I can even see a strip of untouched skin across his chest or his arms.
“Some of it,” Gabriel says, his expression flat. “And don’t look so horrified. He doesn’t deserve your pity.”
“It doesn’t matter what he’s done, no one deserves that.” And I’m not sure anyone can survive administering that kind of torture day after day, the way Gabriel did.
“If you had a full accounting,” Damon Scott says, strolling from the shadows, “I think you would disagree. However, the stories aren’t fit for polite company.”
Penny takes a step back, as if she’s more afraid of the man with a quick smile than the one practically feral tied up with a rope. Damon pauses only infinitesimally, enough to show he notices, not enough to show he cares.
“Forty years ago they thought they could cure what was wrong with his brain.” He waves a hand around, as if showing off some banal art museum instead of torture devices. “That enough heat or electricity or water could shock the crazy out of him.”
My eyes widen. “That’s barbaric.”
“And ineffective,” Gabriel says, his voice harsh.
“Then why are you doing it?”
He tosses the poker down with a horrible clatter. “I’m not trying to cure him.”
“You’re torturing him,” I say, my voice rising in panic. “It’s one thing to kill someone in self-defense. Even revenge. Another to hurt someone like this, to destroy them, to mutilate his body.”
A small laugh. “Have I shocked you again, little virgin?”
Tears spring to my eyes. “Yes.”
Penny touches the back of my hand. “He’s trying to save you.”
I glance back. “How?”
“Yes, how?” Jonathan Scott swings in his ropes, and I see where Damon gets his grotesque humor. He looks almost playful. “Tell her how Gabriel Miller bought her and fucked her and keeps her locked away from the world, all in a desperate bid to save her pretty tits.”
“Get them out of here,” Gabriel mutters to Damon.
When Damon makes a move toward us, I back away. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He sighs. “You really shouldn’t see this.”
“It shouldn’t
be happening! You’ve caught him. You have him. You can turn him over to the cops.”
Damon’s eyes close. “The chief of police is dear old Dad’s drinking buddy. They liked to torture animals together while they watched the game on Sundays.”
My gasp is drowned by the maniacal laugh from the man hanging from the ceiling.
“Did I say animals?” Damon says, glancing back with an impassive expression. “Sometimes dogs. Sometimes girls. Anyone who would scream.”
“Sometimes you,” I whisper.
His dark eyes meet mine. “He doesn’t deserve your compassion.”
“Maybe not, but what about Gabriel? What do you think this is doing to him?”
Damon doesn’t look back at his friend. “You can’t save him, little virgin.”
My eyes narrow. Maybe Gabriel can call me that, but not anyone else. “You should get Penny out of here. She’s been through enough.”
He must figure I’m telling the truth, because he takes a step toward Penny. She backs up, but he doesn’t stop. His hand grabs her wrist. “Come,” he mutters, dragging her behind him.
His rough handling makes me wince, but it’s better that she’s gone from here. I’m not convinced that there isn’t a net hiding under the leaves, ready to trap us when we take the wrong step.
Jonathan Scott sighs with what sounds like pleasure. “I thought they would never leave. I really prefer threesomes to an orgy, don’t you? Much more intimate.”
Gabriel takes a step forward. “I’ll use a gag on you, you sick fuck.”
“Kinky, but I won’t pretend not to like it.”
“Wait.” I put my hand on Gabriel’s arm.
He looks down, half-surprised, half-frustrated. “Damon was right, you know. He doesn’t deserve your mercy.”
“Tell me why you’re doing this. I’m already here, damn it. Let me in.”
“Christ.” He stalks away before turning back. “He put a price on your head. And he’s the only one who can call it off. If I kill him now, there’s someone out there. Maybe multiple someones.”
“How will they get their money if he’s dead?”
He shrugs. “A surrogate might be holding the money. That’s my bet, but even if that weren’t the case, no one would believe he had died.”
I blink. “An assassin wouldn’t believe he could die?”
“I have a reputation,” Jonathan Scott says in a droll tone. As if it bores him. “It’s somewhat magical. Is that what you’d call it? Almost divine.”
“You’re no god,” I tell him.
“Not even for someone who reads about Zeus and Apollo? Why can’t I be one of them?”
“They were men. Ordinary men built up by stories.”
“You’re probably right. I wouldn’t have used the word ‘god,’ myself. I’m more like the bogeyman. The monster under your bed.”
The words send shards of pain through my skull, blinding light and screeching sound colliding. I stumble to the side, stunned and hurting. “No,” I whisper.
I can hear Gabriel calling me, but he’s far away. “Avery!” He sounds worried, but I can’t reassure him.
It comes to me with startling clarity, the way nightmares should never be. The way that can only happen if they’re real. The monster under my bed. He’s Jonathan Scott. Not a god. Not a shadow. A real man.
My stomach clenches hard, and I fall on my hands and knees. The world tilts around me, a spinning vortex. The only thing I can see clearly is my bedroom, with its pink ruffles and white wood furniture. The only thing I can hear is Jonathan Scott’s voice.
“Don’t tell me you forgot me. It would hurt my feelings. Monsters have feelings too, you know.”
Spasms wrench my body, the past and present colliding, a history unlocked. I would have kept it hidden forever—even from myself. And he forced the memories to the surface. “Oh God,” I gasp. “Please stop. Please.”
“What are you doing to her?” Gabriel’s voice. “Stop it right fucking now.”
“I’m not touching her,” he says, and I can hear the smirk in his voice.
That’s the truth. He’s never touched me. All those nights and he never once touched me.
Gabriel wraps his arms around me, and only then do I realize I’d been flailing. I must look insane to him, and maybe it’s the truth. That’s why Jonathan Scott brought me to this place. Not a hospital.
It’s an insane asylum.
“Stop,” I whisper.
“Tell me how to help you,” Gabriel says, gently begging. “What is he doing to you?”
The avalanche can’t be stopped now that it’s started. A small crack in the ice and the entire mountain is coming down. There’s no way for me to avoid the awful knowledge, to hide from the terrible truth of what I am—what Jonathan Scott made me.
The only thing I can possibly do is get Gabriel out of the wreckage. I can condemn him to surviving once again. It’s a cruel thing to do, but I do it with love. Is this the choice that my mother faced? To leave me in a world too dark to keep the both of us?
Gabriel’s golden eyes look luminescent through my tears.
“A doctor,” I lie, because what I really need is time. “I need Anders. He’ll know what to do.”
“I’ll carry you there,” Gabriel says urgently.
I hold out my hand, sure I’ll vomit if he touches me. “Please. No. I can’t.”
“I can’t leave you here with him.”
“It’s the only way.”
Gabriel stares at me for a long moment, before finally ducking out of the building.
Then I’m alone with the man who starred in my nightmares, who infiltrated my dreams. The very real monster under my bed—Jonathan Scott, in the flesh.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“It was you, all along.”
“I don’t know why anyone didn’t realize. When they found the equipment in the walls, I was sure they’d guess. Why would I only talk to the beautiful Helen James when her lovely little daughter slept under the same roof every night?”
“Because they don’t think like you,” I whisper, horrified.
Not only horrified at the man hanging in front of me, but at myself.
“Don’t blame yourself,” he says, sympathetic. “Repression is a powerful instinct. Much like fight-or-flight. You thought you could forget me.”
“Until you reminded me.”
I’m a little surprised that Gabriel left me here, even believing I needed a doctor. But I still won’t have much time. Maybe fifteen minutes? Until Gabriel reaches the Den and finds it in shambles. He might find Anders, still waiting on an ambulance, or only broken glass.
Either way, he’ll come right back here.
“I had hoped that you would come to me on your own. And then Gabriel Miller took an interest in you. I knew I had to act or I would lose you forever.”
“You never had me.”
“Didn’t I?”
“Never,” I say, shocked by the sharpness of my voice. There’s rage inside me that I never even knew about, never dreamed about. Even in my nightmares I was afraid.
“Who taught you about your body? About your pretty nipples and the other places you were pink?”
My teeth clench together. “Shut your mouth.”
“Who told you to touch yourself to make it feel good? Which parts were soft and hard, which parts to pinch or draw little circles around?”
“You’re disgusting,” I hiss, my body remembering each pinch, each circle.
“You didn’t think so at the time. You said it felt good.”
“I was a child.”
He lifts one shoulder, arms still tied above his head. “What’s wrong with teaching a child about her body? What’s wrong with showing her pleasure?”
I pick up the poker, pressing it into the small bed of hot coals. They don’t look as red as when I came in, but they’ll have to do. Steam rushes from between the coals, nudged aside by the iron I hold. It’s heavier than I thought, but still not as har
d or as sharp as I feel inside.
“Are you going to show me pleasure?” he asks, his voice low.
He wants me to hurt him. We’re linked enough for me to know that about him. It feels like a loss, to give him what he wants, but it also feels like winning.
“I wasn’t afraid of you,” I tell him, holding the iron poker in the air.
“And I loved that about you,” he says, earnest, coaxing. “Little girls and boys run away from me. They know, without me ever speaking a word.”
My bitter laugh echoes off the grimy tile. “I guess that makes me a fool.”
“Don’t pretend,” he says, fierce. “Don’t pretend that you didn’t know what I was. You knew it was wrong. You knew enough to keep your mouth shut when you talked to your mother. She never knew that we talked.”
“I’m glad she never knew. Because she loved you.”
“She didn’t love me. Is that what your jealous father has you thinking? Or maybe that was you, coming up with tales. You always were a romantic.”
“Based on what I told you as a child?”
“Yes, based on that. It’s everything, those innocent words. So pure. But your mother only loved herself. Looking in the mirror, having the world fawn over her. She didn’t love me. She didn’t love your father.”
“Stop.”
“And she didn’t love you.”
“You would say anything to hurt me.”
“Come, little girl. You knew that already. You’ve always known.”
I hold the iron poker with both hands, ready to swing like a bat. “How much damage do you think this will do? How many times will I get to swing it? Five? Six? Or will you be dead on the first one?”
“Mama never pays attention to me,” he says in a strange, soft voice. My voice, I realize. “She only looks at me when I’m wearing a new dress. And then says I look just like her. But she doesn’t seem happy. She seems sad.”
He’s repeating my words back to me. Entire conversations a little girl might have had with an imaginary friend at a tea party. And I spoke with the voice in the wall, the disembodied man who told me he cared about me, who whispered things to try in the cover of night.